All posts by Joseph

Usual Rubbish

Take it away.

Okay… let’s put it another way. Take me away. That’s more like it. Has a pleasing finality, a sense of “closure” – that quintessentially American value. Yes, that’s it. Closure. Aaaaahhhhhhh. Multo mucho end-o-lissimo.

As some of you will recall, your Big Green fiends (I mean, friends… what a difference a letter makes!) were served last week with that loathsome object known as a writ of eviction. Seems there are forces at work in the land that want to keep the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill — our beloved squat — as abandoned as its name suggests. They also happen to have local codes and property law on their side, it appears. Not good. Not at all good to have police showing you the door… especially when they want you to walk through it, besides. (I’ve seen the freaking door, okay? Stop pushing me!) I mean, it’s one thing to throw people bodily out of the only home they’ve ever called their own…. but you don’t need to get nasty about it. Or do you….?

Got to tell you, this is all about money. Sure, sure, you’ve heard me jabber on about this before. But it’s true, I’m telling you. I’ve got it on the best authority — Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who has been hanging around the local public houses, Tonto like, listening in on other people’s conversations.  These real estate developers from Madagascar, it seems, have targeted the Cheney Hammer Mill as part of a larger parcel that will soon be converted into luxury condos and sold to… well… sold to people who can afford them. People like Mitch Macaphee. You know… the heavy wallet brigade. Silver and riches. Gold and jewels. That’s all that ever matters to the local planning ministry! They would sell their grandmother’s grave to developers, and send the same thugs harassing us now to see her exhumed and consigned to street beggary.

Do I seem bitter? Well, hey… I just spent the night in the flapjack vendor’s cart with Marvin running interference. My ass is killing me. Even more troubling is the fact that this consortium of developers will not stop with our humble hammer mill. I’ve heard mutterings that they are planning to pave over large sections of the Indian Ocean and start selling parcels to retirees and businesses. Mitch Macaphee’s eyes kind of lit up when he heard about this little scheme — I could almost see the diagrams being drafted in that big floppy brain of his. A veritable city on the sea. As if that isn’t bad enough, I can see the same kind of sparkle in Commandante Lincoln’s eyes, as well: vast new lands to conquer! A new horizon for the hoary junta. God be praised!

But hey… we’re not beaten yet. No sir, not by a long shot. This is just the opening salvo in Big Green‘s continuing battle for its wholly illegitimate home. Hey – be that as it may, it is more legitimate than that bloody flapjack stand. (And a hell of a lot roomier, too.)

Political Rants

Fear factor.

Remembering the Holocaust this week, a prominent New York Rabbi described Iran as an existential threat to Israel and the Jewish people. (Never to be outdone in the overstatement game, our own Senator Charles Schumer declared there to be no difference between Hamas and Nazi Germany… Hamas now being the most powerful military/industrial power in the world, hell-bent on territorial expansion.) It does astonishingly poor service to the memory of the millions killed by Hitler and his crew to use them as part of an effort to whip up war fever. Iran is years away from producing nuclear weapons, if they ever shall, and such a capability would only be useful to them as a deterrent. Ahmadenijad may obligingly employ Paleolithic anti-Israeli rhetoric, but I doubt he and the ruling elite of Persia will be ready to commit national suicide any time soon… for that is what the offensive use of nuclear weapons would mean for them, and they know it. The only nations that pose an existential threat to other nations are the major nuclear powers, including Israel (possessed of 200-300 undeclared nuclear weapons ) and, of course, the U.S. with its overwhelming arsenal of potential global destruction. 

So long as there is the threat of attack from hostile foreign powers, Iran will seek a nuclear deterrent. This is a general principle in international relations — one boldly underscored by the Bush administration’s open policy of unprovoked war. Our military forces are on both sides of them, and we have a history of interference in their internal affairs, from World War II through the CIA-sponsored 1953 coup and straight up the present day. Think they’re paranoid? Wouldn’t you be? Hard question for most Americans to answer. We don’t have a history of domination by foreign powers, nor any experience dealing with nations more powerful than we are. What’s more, we seem to have a national incapacity to put ourselves in other people’s shoes — that’s far too “gay” for us. That’s why we treat weighty topics like war with such casualness — we can sit through most of our wars like it’s pay-per view television. Our politicians reflect that distant attitude, advocating the hard line and a very early resort to violence. (See Hillary Clinton.)

With so many willing executioners among us, it doesn’t take much to get us embroiled in some overseas fiasco. Just apply the fear factor. We’re already running down the now familiar checklist with respect to Iran. Nuclear ambitions (or the hysterical accusation thereof)? Check. Semi-unshaven and very ethnic-looking leader whose name may be preceded in print by modifiers like “hard-line” and “extremist”? Check. Inspirational and or material support for groups we identify as terrorist — like the Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah — as opposed to practitioners of state terror allied to Uncle Sam? Check. Enough natural resources, such as oil, gas, gold, and other riches, to make Pat Robertson want to invest and Cheney want to rethink his “other priorities”? Double check. Iran gets special bonus points for saying nasty things about Israel and for being provocatively and unrelentingly adjacent to not one but two countries we’ve wanted to invade and many others who live on top of our oil. 

Damning evidence indeed. As our Solomon-like president famously said in the run-up to his Iraq triumph, what else do we need to know?

Usual Rubbish

Pull the other one.

Hey, I meant figuratively, damn it. That smarts! I’ve only got two legs, you know. And two arms, so go easy. Ouch! Watch it, friend…. I’ve only got one of those. Accursed gendarmes!

Oh, crikey. You heard all that then, didn’t you? Geez. Welcome back to the house of pain, a.k.a. the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, now in the process of being more abandoned than ever. That is to say, our little squatting party is being forcibly broken up by thugs from the local constabulary, hired on their off hours by building contractors who have been lusting after this piece of land for some months now. Like Colombian death squads in the night, they shed their uniforms and do their dirty work. Bastards! How the hell did Marvin (my personal robot assistant) work with these fiends? 

Yeah, so anyway — the lawyer thing didn’t pan out. Nobody wanted to take the case, even with our financial advisor Geet O’Reilly’s persistent urging, egged on by a blue-spotted Mitch Macaphee. No money in it, you see? Not a good prospect. Oh… and our little impromptu protest, reported on in these pages last week, had little or no effect, other than to light a fire under the constables, who were pounding on our door just a few mornings later with the writ of eviction tucked into their baby-blue helmets. Take it from me, this is not the sort of thing you want to wake up to. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think real fast in the morning…. so my first inclination was to try to give them the slip. That was plan C from outer space, quite frankly. (My idea, I’m afraid…)

Plan C went like this: Matt, John and I snuck out the back door of the Cheney Hammer Mill, along with the Big Zamboola, who is the only other member of our entourage that gets out of bed early. None of us has any kind of motor vehicle at this point, so we had to walk past the v-formation of heavily armed police attempting to dislodge us from our lodgings (or de-mill us from our millings, to be more precise). Perhaps it was that sixth sense all constables have that tipped them off to our presence, working our way up a side street (or perhaps it was the admittedly incongruous sight of Big Zamboola — a man-sized planetoid — bouncing up the street like one of those oversized “earth” balls).  We thought we had shaken them when I felt that big, cold hand on my shoulder. Man… I should have listened to Zamboola’s rantings for once. Usually he’s talking about sandwiches, you know  

Hokey smokes – so we’ve been served. And I don’t mean somebody has shown us their killer dance moves. I mean the constables handed us the eviction notice. So it’s on. I’d have to say Marvin’s reaction has been the most dramatic so far. Panhandling. Panhandling… on the first day of our grace period. We haven’t even been tossed out yet, and he’s working the streets. Sheesh. (Hope he picks up enough for a pizza — I’m freaking
starving.)